Hostname: page-component-8448b6f56d-m8qmq Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-04-19T13:06:25.026Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Referential interactions of Turkish-learning children with their caregivers about non-absent objects: integration of non-verbal devices and prior discourse*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  13 June 2017

BEYZA Ş. ATEŞ  and
AYLİN C. KÜNTAY
BEYZA Ş. ATEŞ*
Affiliation:
Department of Psychology, School of Social Sciences and Humanities, Koç University, İstanbul
AYLİN C. KÜNTAY
Affiliation:
Department of Psychology, School of Social Sciences and Humanities, Koç University, İstanbul
*
Address for correspondence: Beyza Ş. Ateş, İstanbul Kemerburgaz University, School of Economics, Administrative and Social Sciences, Department of Psychology, D Building, Room 317, Mahmutbey Mahallesi, Mahmutbey Dilmenler Caddesi, No:26, 34218 Bağcılar, İstanbul-Turkey. tel: +90 0212 6040100 extension:1618; e-mail: beyza.ates@kemerburgaz.edu.tr
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

This paper examines the way children younger than two use non-verbal devices (i.e., deictic gestures and communicative functional acts) and pay attention to discourse status (i.e., prior mention vs. newness) of referents in interactions with caregivers. Data based on semi-naturalistic interactions with caregivers of four children, at ages 1;00, 1;05, and 1;09, are analyzed. We report that children employ different types of non-verbal devices to supplement their inadequate referential forms before gaining mastery in language. By age 1;09, children show sensitivity to discourse status by using deictic gestures to accompany their non-lexical forms for new referents. A comparison of children's patterns with those in the input they receive reveals that caregivers choose their referential forms in accordance with discourse status information and tend to use different types of non-verbal devices to accompany their lexical and non-lexical referential forms. These results show that non-verbal devices play an important role in early referential discourse.

Type
Articles
Information
Journal of Child Language , Volume 45 , Issue 1 , January 2018 , pp. 148 - 173
Check for updates
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2017 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Footnotes

*

This research is the part of the Koç University Longitudinal Language Development Database (KULLDD) developed at the Language and Communication Development Lab at Koç University (Küntay, Koçbaş, & Taşcı, 2015) and funded by TUBA and Eurocores, ESF. The database in the present paper is now part of the ‘ACQDIV Corpus’ (2016, <http://www.acqdiv.uzh.ch/en/resources.html>). We would like to thank Dilara Koçbaş and Engin Arık for coordinating the corpus project; Vasfiye Geçkin for editing the manuscript; Aslı Özden, Ayça Bilmez, and Ozan Kuru for transcribing our dataset; and Ezgi Aydoğdu for assisting in the coding of our dataset. We also warmly thank the families and their children who took part in the corpus project for their contribution to the development of the corpus data.

References

REFERENCES

Allen, S. E. M. (2000). A discourse-pragmatic explanation for argument representation in child Inuktitut. Linguistics 38, 483–521.Google Scholar
Allen, S. E. M. & Schröder, H. (2003). Preferred argument structure in early Inuktitut spontaneous speech data. In Du Bois, J. W., Kumpf, L. E. & Ashby, W. J. (eds), Preferred argument structure: grammar as architecture for function [Studies in Discourse and Grammar 14], 301–38. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.Google Scholar
Allen, S. E. M., Skarabela, B. & Hughes, M. E. (2008). Using corpora to examine discourse effects in syntax. In Behrens, H. (ed.), Trends in corpus research: finding structure in data, 99–137. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.Google Scholar
Ariel, M. (2001). Accessibility theory: an overview. In Sanders, T. J. M, Schilperoord, J. & Spooren, W. (eds), Text representation: linguistic and psycholinguistic aspects, 29–87. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.Google Scholar
Ateş-Şen, B. (2010). The effects of discourse-pragmatic principles on young Turkish toddlers' and their regular caregivers' referential expressions. Unpublished MA thesis, Koç University.Google Scholar
Ateş-Şen, B. & Küntay, A. (2015). The impact of caregiver feedback on children's referential choices. In Serratrice, L. & Shanley, A. (eds), The acquisition of reference, 241–62. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.Google Scholar
Baldwin, D. A. (1991). Infants’ contribution to the achievement of joint reference. Child Development 62, 874–90.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Behne, T., Carpenter, M. & Tomasello, M. (2005). One-year-olds comprehend the communicative intentions behind gestures in a hiding game. Developmental Science 8, 492–9.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bloom, P. (1990). Subjectless sentences in child language. Linguistic Inquiry 21, 491–504.Google Scholar
Campbell, A. L., Brooks, P. & Tomasello, M. (2000). Factors affecting young children's use of pronouns as referring expressions. Journal of Speech, Language, and Hearing Research 43, 1337–49.Google Scholar
Capirci, O., Contaldo, A., Caselli, M. C. & Volterra, V. (2005). From action to language through gesture: a longitudinal perspective. Gesture 5, 155–77.Google Scholar
Carpenter, M., Nagell, K. & Tomasello, M. (1998). Social cognition, joint attention, and communicative competence from 9 to 15 months of age. Monographs of the Society for Research in Child Development 63 (4, Serial No. 255).Google Scholar
Choi, (2000). Caregiver input in English and Korean: use of nouns and verbs in book-reading and toy-play contexts. Journal of Child Language 27, 69–96.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Church, R. B. & Goldin-Meadow, S. (1986). The mismatch between gesture and speech as an index of transitional knowledge. Cognition 23, 43–71.Google Scholar
Clancy, P. M. (1993). Preferred argument structure in Korean acquisition. In Clark, E. V. (ed.), Proceedings of the 25th Annual Child Language Research Forum (pp. 307–314). Stanford, CA: CSLI Publications.Google Scholar
Demir, Ö. E. & So, W. C. (2006). What's hidden in the hands? How children use gesture to convey arguments in a motion event. In Brugos, A., Clark-Cotton, M. R. & Ha, S. (Eds.), Proceedings of the 31st Boston University Conference on Language Development, 172–83. Somerville, MA: Cascadilla Press.Google Scholar
Demir, Ö. E., So, W., Özyürek, A. & Goldin-Meadow, S. (2012). Turkish- and English-speaking children display sensitivity to perceptual context in the referring expressions they produce in speech and gesture. Language and Cognitive Processes 27, 844–67.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Furman, R., Küntay, A. & Özyürek, A. (2014). Early language-specificity of children's event encoding in speech and gesture: evidence from caused motion in Turkish. Language, Cognition and Neuroscience 29, 620–34.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Garber, P., Alibali, M. W. & Goldin-Meadow, S. (1998). Knowledge conveyed in gesture is not tied to the hands. Child Development 69, 75–84.Google Scholar
Göksun, T., Hirsh-Pasek, K. & Golinkoff, R. M. (2010). How do preschoolers express cause in gesture and speech? Cognitive Development 25, 56–68.Google Scholar
Goldin-Meadow, S. (2005). The two faces of gesture: language and thought. Gesture 5, 239–55.Google Scholar
Goldin-Meadow, S., Alibali, M. W. & Church, R. B. (1993). Transitions in concept acquisition: using the hand to read the mind. Psychological Review 100, 279–97.Google Scholar
Goldin-Meadow, S. & Butcher, C. (2003). Pointing toward two-word speech in young children. In Kita, S. (ed.), Pointing: where language, culture, and cognition meet, 85–107. Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum.Google Scholar
Greenfield, P. M. & Smith, J. H. (1976). The structure of communication in early language development. New York: Academic Press.Google Scholar
Grinstead, J. (2004). Subjects and interface delay in child Spanish and Catalan. Language 80, 40–72.Google Scholar
Guerriero, A. M. S., Oshima-Takane, Y. & Kuriyama, Y. (2006). The development of referential choice in English and Japanese: a discourse-pragmatic perspective. Journal of Child Language 33, 823–57.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Gundel, J. K., Hedberg, N. & Zacharski, R. (1993). Cognitive status and the form of referring expressions in discourse. Language 69, 274–307.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Gürcanlı, Ö., Nakipoğlu, M. & Özyürek, A. (2007). Shared information and argument omission in Turkish. In Caunt-Nulton, H., Kulatilake, S. & Woo, I. (eds), Proceedings of the 31st Annual Boston University Conference on Language Development, 262–73. Somerville, MA: Cascadilla Press.Google Scholar
Hellwig, B. (2008). ELAN-Linguistic Annotator: Version 3.6. Online: <http://www.lat-mpi.eu/tools/elan/download> (last accessed 1 November 2008).+(last+accessed+1+November+2008).>Google Scholar
Hirakawa, M. (1993). Null subjects versus null objects in an early grammar of Japanese. McGill Working Papers in Linguistics 9, 30–45.Google Scholar
Huang, C. (2011). Referential choice in Mandarin child language: a discourse-pragmatic perspective. Journal of Pragmatics 43, 2057–80.Google Scholar
Huang, C. (2012). Referential choice and informativeness in mother–child conversation: a focus on the mother. Language Sciences 34, 319–38.Google Scholar
Hughes, M. E. (2011). An analysis of discourse-pragmatic and grammatical constraints on the acquisition and development of referential choice in child English. Unpublished doctoral dissertation, Boston University.Google Scholar
Hughes, M. E. & Allen, S. E. M. (2013). The effect of individual discourse-pragmatic features on referential choice in child English. Journal of Pragmatics 56, 15–30.Google Scholar
Hughes, M. E. & Allen, S. E. M. (2014). The incremental effect of discourse-pragmatic sensitivity on referential choice in the acquisition of a first language. Lingua 155, 43–61.Google Scholar
Iverson, J. M. & Goldin-Meadow, S. (2005). Gesture paves the way for language development. Psychological Science 16, 368–71.Google Scholar
Küntay, A. C., Koçbaş, D. & Taşçı, S. S. (2015). Koç University Longitudinal Language Development Database on language acquisition of 8 children from 8- to 36-months of age, as a part of the ‘ACQDIV Corpus’, online <http://www.acqdiv.uzh.ch/en/resources.html>..>Google Scholar
Liebal, K., Behne, T., Carpenter, M. & Tomasello, M. (2009). Infants use shared experience to interpret pointing gestures. Developmental Science 12, 264–71.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Liszkowski, U., Brown, P., Callaghan, T., Takada, A. & De Vos, C. (2012). A prelinguistic gestural universal of human communication. Cognitive Science 36, 698–713.Google Scholar
Liszkowski, U., Carpenter, M., Henning, A., Striano, T. & Tomasello, M. (2004). Twelve-month-olds point to share attention and interest. Developmental Science 7, 297–307.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Liszkowski, U., Carpenter, M., Striano, T. & Tomasello, M. (2006). 12- and 18-month-olds point to provide information. Journal of Cognition and Development 7, 173–87.Google Scholar
Liszkowski, U., Carpenter, M. & Tomasello, M. (2007). Reference and attitude in infant pointing. Journal of Child Language 32, 1–20.Google Scholar
Liszkowski, U., Carpenter, M. & Tomasello, M. (2008). Twelve-month-olds communicate helpfully and appropriately for knowledgeable and ignorant partners. Cognition 108, 732–9.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
MacWhinney, B. (2000). The CHILDES project: tools for analyzing talk, 3rd ed. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.Google Scholar
Marascuilo, L. A. & McSweeney, M. (1977). Nonparametric and distribution-free methods for the social sciences. Manterey, CA: Brooks/Cole.Google Scholar
Matthews, D., Lieven, E., Theakston, A. & Tomasello, M. (2006). The effect of perceptual availability and prior discourse on young children's use of referring expressions. Applied Psycholinguistics 27, 403–22.Google Scholar
Moll, H. & Tomasello, M. (2004). 12- and 18-month-old infants follow gaze to spaces behind barriers. Developmental Science 7, F1–9.Google Scholar
Narasimhan, B., Budwig, N. & Murty, L. (2005). Argument realization in Hindi caregiver–child discourse. Journal of Pragmatics 37, 461–95.Google Scholar
Ogura, T., Dale, P. S., Yamashita, Y., Murase, T. & Mahieu, A. (2006). The use of nouns and verbs by Japanese children and their caregivers in book-reading and toy-playing. Journal of Child Language 33, 1–29.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Özçalışkan, S. & Goldin-Meadow, S. (2005). Gesture is at the cutting edge of early language development. Cognition 96, B101–13.Google Scholar
Özçalışkan, S. & Goldin-Meadow, S. (2009). When gesture–speech combinations do and do not index linguistic change. Language and Cognitive Processes 24, 190–217.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Paradis, J. & Navarro, S. (2003). Subject realization and crosslinguistic interference in the bilingual acquisition of Spanish and English: What is the role of input? Journal of Child Language 30, 371–93.Google Scholar
Rohde, H. & Frank, M. C. (2014). Markers of topical discourse in child-directed speech. Cognitive Science 38, 1634–61.Google Scholar
Rozendaal, M. & Baker, A. (2008). A crosslinguistic investigation of the acquisition of the pragmatics of indefinite and definite reference in two-year-olds. Journal of Child Language 38, 1–35.Google Scholar
Rozendaal, M. & Baker, A. (2010). The acquisition of reference: pragmatic aspects and the influences of language input. Journal of Pragmatics 42, 1866–79.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Salomo, D., Graf, E. & Lieven, E. (2011). The role of perceptual availability and discourse context in young children's question answering. Journal of Child Language 38, 918–31.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Salomo, D., Lieven, E. & Tomasello, M. (2010). Young children's sensitivity to new and given information when answering predicate-focus questions. Applied Psycholinguistics 31, 101–15.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Salomo, D. & Liszkowski, U. (2013). Sociocultural settings influence the emergence of prelinguistic deictic gestures. Child Development 84, 1296–307.Google Scholar
Serratrice, L. (2005). The role of discourse-pragmatics in the acquisition of subjects in Italian. Applied Psycholinguistics 26, 437–62.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Skarabela, B. (2007). Signs of early social cognition in children's syntax: the case of joint attention in argument realization in child Inuktitut. Lingua 117, 1837–57.Google Scholar
Skarabela, B. & Allen, S. E. M. (2010). How newness and joint attention work together in child Inuktitut: assessing discourse-pragmatic models of early argument realization. In Franich, K., Iserman, K. M. & Lauren, L. K. (eds), Proceedings of the 34th Annual Boston University Conference on Language Development, 385–96. Somerville, MA: Cascadilla Press.Google Scholar
Skarabela, B., Allen, S. E. M. & Scott-Philips, T. C. (2013). Joint attention helps explain why children omit new referents. Journal of Pragmatics 56, 5–14.Google Scholar
So, W. C., Demir, Ö. E. & Goldin-Meadow, S. (2010). When speech is ambiguous, gesture steps in: sensitivity to discourse-pragmatic principles in early childhood. Applied Psycholinguistics 31, 209–24.Google Scholar
So, W. C. & Lim, J. Y. (2012). Point to a referent, and say, ‘what is this?’ Gesture as a potential cue to identify referents in a discourse. Applied Psycholinguistics 33, 329–42.Google Scholar
So, W. C., Lim, J. Y. & Tan, (2014). Sensitivity to information status in discourse: gesture precedes speech in unbalanced bilinguals. Applied Psycholinguistics 35, 71–95.Google Scholar
Stephens, G. & Matthews, D. (2014). The communicative infant from 0–18 months: the social-cognitive foundations of pragmatic development. In Matthews, D. (ed.), Pragmatic development in first language acquisition (pp. 13–36). Amsterdam: John Benjamins.Google Scholar
Valian, V. (1991). Syntactic subjects in the early speech of American and Italian children. Cognition 40, 21–81.Google Scholar
Wang, Q., Lillo-Martin, D., Best, C. T. & Levitt, A. (1992). Null subject versus null object: some evidence from the acquisition of Chinese and English. Language Acquisition 2, 221–54.CrossRefGoogle Scholar